■7-44 
THE RURAL NEW-YOKKHii 
June ti9. 
Hope Farm Notes 
Strawberries. —Our crop is the best 
we have ever had, both in quality and 
quantity. I did not quite expect this. 
There has been too much rain, and 
the grass and weeds beat us until part 
of the field looked like a meadow. The 
berries came on, however, and were 
certainly large and fine; we got most 
of them off. Of course, there had to 
be a heavy rain on Saturday in the 
height of the picking, and many ber¬ 
ries softened or rotted over Sunday, 
yet, on the whole, it was the most 
satisfactory crop we have ever picked. 
Practically all were sold in what we 
call our local trade—only a few crates 
were sent by express. In some cases 
people will come with motor cars and 
take two or more crates. Others drive 
to the farm and get five boxes or more. 
I find that if you let people know that 
your stuff is superior they will usually 
plan all sorts of ways to get it. One 
plan is to get three or four neighbors 
to take a crate of berries each day. 
One day it goes to Mrs. Jones who 
passes out what the others want and 
cans the rest. Next day Mrs. Brown 
has the crate, and so on. Near large 
towns this can be worked, and it makes 
a very satisfactory'- trade. Our three 
little boys wanted to sell berries, so we 
started them off with Madge and the 
wagon. The 10-year-old drove and the 
six- and seven-year youngster sold. 
They took 40 quarts the first day and 
sold 38. One day they sold over 50. 
They get 10 per cent, of their sales 
and enjoy the work. Madge is perfectly 
safe and those little boys all know how 
to drive. It is good business training 
for them and a help in this busy season. 
Varieties. —We have only one to re¬ 
port, as usual—Marshall. Nothing like 
standing right by old friends when 
they use you well. People come hooting 
at me for growing Marshall when there 
are so many better varieties. They' say 
Marshall is a “back number.'” No doubt, 
but it is like a good book or paper, 
every back number is full of enduring 
and helpful matter. I grant that Mar¬ 
shall is a light yielder, a poor plant- 
maker and very inferior in light soil 
or in a close matted row. It must be 
petted and suited in culture and soil, 
but when you do suit it the berries 
will be larger, finer, handsomer and 
higher flavor than any other we have 
tried. We test many new ones and 
see the others growing. This year there 
are a dozen or more in the garden. Two 
or three are good, and if I were ship¬ 
ping berries I should plant heavily of 
one new seedling. It is productive and 
firm—-but there you stop. ’If, after 
supplying Marshall, we put this new 
berry before our cusomers we should 
have no end of trouble. Let any berry 
grower put out a few Marshalls and 
care for them properly, I will guar¬ 
antee that his family will find the place 
and reject other sorts for their own 
eating. It is like some of those farmers 
with herds of big cattle keeping a little 
Jersey cow tucked away in one corner 
to provide the family milk and cream. 
Take some of these men who sell Ben 
Davis apples by the hundred barrels— 
the family bin is filled with Jonathan or 
McIntosh. Others will say the same 
thing of other strawberry varieties. One 
man told me his customers preferred 
Stevens because they thought the dark 
crimson color of Marshall showed that 
it was overripe. I cannot understand 
how the flat flavor of Stevens can melt 
in the mouth of any normal human 
being, but this man’s customers call for 
it. We could tell some big stories of 
yield and price of Marshalls, but big 
stories trip people up rather than help 
them. They are only good for a fancy 
trade in big berries or for the real 
thing in a home garden. We have our 
usual trouble this year in getting pickers 
to handle the fruit right. The average 
beginner sees the big red berries and 
proceeds to pull them off as he would 
apples. This means crushed and bruised 
fruit. I found one picker breaking off 
fruit stems, picking off the few ripe 
berries and throwing the dozen green 
ones away. We picked him out of the 
patch about as berries ought not to 
be picked, we do not want the berry 
touched with the hand at all. We take 
hold of the stem, pinch it off with the 
thumb and finger nails and use the short 
stem as a handle to put it in the box. 
The proper way to pick these fancy ber¬ 
ries is to employ careful men or wom¬ 
en and pay them by the day. Let them 
pick into baskets or pans and have one 
or more careful women to sort and 
pack the fruit from these pans. The 
more fancy your trade is the more care¬ 
less picking will queer it. 
What Now?—That is the old ques¬ 
tion which always comes in strawberry 
time. What happens to the plants after 
picking? All I can tell is what wg 
do. Our plants were set three feet 
apart each way. We let many runners 
go to fill our plant trade and the grass 
and weeds worked in. As soon as pos¬ 
sible after fruiting the whole field will 
be cut off with the mowing machine. 
Without waiting for it to dry so as to 
burn this cutting will be raked and piled 
around some nearby trees. Then we 
expect to take out the center disks of 
our double-action Cutaway and work 
both ways, leaving the parent plants 
where they were put originally and 
chopping out the middles. If this does 
not work we use a small plow, go both 
ways and follow with the cultivator. 
The object is to clean out the middles. 
Then the parent plants will be well 
fertilized and forced to throw out run¬ 
ners. If we were after a full fruit 
crop all but five runners from each 
parent would be cut off, but as we want 
potted and layer plants, we let more 
of them grow, keeping the middles clean 
and not letting the plant-making go 
too far. Of course, this means fewer 
berries, but the plant trade more than 
makes up. There are half a dozen 
other methods. Some who grow in 
matted rows cut and burn and then plow 
a furrow from each side over the fruit¬ 
ing row. Then they work this ridge 
down with the cultivator and start the 
new plants in fresh vigor. Others plow 
out the fruiting row and start a new 
one in what was the middle of the 
old bed. In all cases the object is to 
cut back the plants and stimulate a new 
strong growth by feeding and cultiva¬ 
tion. 
Invalids. —Spot came hobbling up 
from the pasture on three legs, ap- 
a plow and draft horse, and everybody 
seems to know it except Tom himself 
at those moments when his mother’s 
sporting blood sets him wrong. At 
times this big, clumsy colt has dreams 
of the race track. Very likely he 
boasted to Brownie how he could show 
her the dust if he had her chance—• 
and she lashed at him with those 
nimble little feet. Tom’s mother is 
not the first one to get her boy into 
troubles very much like this in all its 
details. An open wound on the hock 
joint is bad and dangerous business. 
We have kept the wound dressed and 
the joint wrapped in cold bandages to 
reduce the fever. I think the horse will 
get through. It is hard to see half 
your big team in the hospital with the 
corn not all planted and the weeds 
growing and the Cutaway standing idle. 
Value of Standing Crops. —There 
are a number of questions like this: 
I have about four acres in Winter rye, 
also four in Timothy (alone), seeded first 
time last Fall. Both promise a fair crop. 
What would be about a reasonable price to 
ask for both per acre, the buyer to harvest, 
considering that there is a general good 
crop of both in sight? What is about the 
average yield per acre of hay and straw? 
New Jersey. a. 
In our section the average yield 
might run one and one-half tons of 
hay, or one ton of straw and 20 bushels 
of rye grain per acre. If anything, it 
would be under those figures, yet it 
might in exceptional cases be double, 
I could not venture a guess at a price 
without seeing and estimating the crop. 
When the cutting is done on shares the 
worker usually gets half the crop and 
delivers the other half in the owner’s 
barn. That is the usual practice, and 
it has established the rule of paying 
somewhat less than half the probable 
value when the crop is bought standing. 
The buyer takes the risk of bad weather 
THE HOME OF THE FOUR-FOOTED REDHEADS. 
parently in great pain. Spot is the 
new cow. We led her home about 
four miles some two weeks ago. No, 
there was no such experience as we 
had with that Florida cow. Spot has 
no wild woods blood in her. She made 
no fight and struggle, but came along 
like a trained dog or horse. But from 
the way she limped home from pasture, 
you would have said every joint in her 
leg and shoulder had been pulled off its 
hinges. I have seen men limp about as 
badly from the effect of a sore toe, 
but we forgot that at Spot’s painful 
draggle. So we got the vet to set that 
shoulder right. But he could find 
nothing wrong with shoulder or leg or 
knee. Every bone was in place, and 
there was no pain until you got down 
to one claw of the left front foot. 
When you touched that it was like step¬ 
ping on the toe of a gouty man. It 
was not foot rot, but something seemed 
to have worked into that claw to raise 
a revolution. The treatment was to 
cut away the horn at the bottom of 
this claw and pack a dressing on it. 
Spot now carries her foot in a bag. 
She still limps a little, but is bearing 
more and more her weight upon that 
foot. You would hardly think that 
one small claw could dominate all the 
rest of a large cow, but watch the way 
some big men put on the agony over 
a bruised toe nail or a blister on their 
heel. I never saw exactly such a case 
as Spot’s before. This cow starts with 
something over 20 pounds of milk per 
day, but it will test about one per cent, 
higher in fat than Mollie’s. We shall 
keep their records side by side. . . . 
The other invalid is Tom, the big gray 
colt. Brownie lashed out at him and 
hit him on the hock join£. I know not 
the origin of this quarrel/Tom’s mother 
had some little spirit and speed, which 
she mixed in with his father’s big feet 
and powerful frame. Tom is built for 
and delays and discounts this in his 
price. At auctions we have had stand¬ 
ing grass sell at from $5 to $12 per 
acre, depending on the crop and the 
season. This figures cured hay at $18 
or more per ton. Some good farmer 
could estimate closely what it ought 
to cost to handle this crop and about 
what it will yield. No one could tell 
you without going through the crop and 
studying it. We should either get some 
farmer to do this and sell on his fig¬ 
ures or let some one cut it on the half 
share. 
A Mulching Discovery. —These back- 
to-the-landers and “agriculturists” get 
some fun out of farming—when they 
have the price to pay for it. Here is a 
discovery: 
One delight of farming is that any green¬ 
horn may find out something new. In fact 
the greener your horn the more likely you 
are to do so because you are less set in 
your ways and less a slave to authority. 
Here is an idea that I cheerfully dedicate 
to my fellow greenhorns. Maybe I'm a dis¬ 
coverer. Witch grass, or twitch grass as 
a neighbor calls it, got into my asparagus 
bed. I mowed the grass, covered the bed 
with a single layer of newspapers and threw 
manure, straw and trash on the papers to 
hold them down. The asparagus comes up 
through the paper and the grass is killed. 
Perhaps it needs a rain to soften the paper 
or you can sprinkle it with water. This 
is a good way to mulch other things. Cover 
the ground about your young trees with 
newspapers and throw dirt, manure, straw 
or other things on the paper. You can use 
as many thicknesses as you like here. Grass 
cannot grow and the moisture is retained. 
I am going to set a strawbery bed in this 
way, bringing each plant up through a hole 
in a piece of newspaper. w. c. deiiing. 
The slave to authority will certainly 
be bossed and cuffed by events. Our 
good friend has demonstrated one of 
the theories of killing out this much- 
named and much-cursed grass. If you 
can prevent its growing above ground 
you smother it or shut off its wind 
and it cannot live. Sheep do this by 
keeping the blades nibbled close. Buck¬ 
wheat or other rank-growing crops do 
it by shutting off most of its growth. 
A mulch of straw, manure, sawdust or 
shavings will also do it by “shutting 
off its wind.” That is what the paper 
did when held down by manure or 
straw. This is not new, but one of the 
good things which ought to be repeated 
over and over. We have tried the 
paper around trees. It does the work 
by keeping the soil moist and cool and 
smothering weeds and grass. As for the 
strawberries—the scheme has been tried 
in various ways. We have known 
people to bore auger holes in boards 
and let the strawberry plants grow up 
through those holes. No mulching or 
cultivation was required. A few years 
ago there was an attempted boom for 
growing strawberries on barrels. The 
barrels were packed full of dirt, then 
anger holes were bored through the 
about 200 auger holes were bored 
through the barrel staves into the soil. A 
strawberry plant was to be set in each 
hole and well packed in. The barrel stood 
on end and was watered at the head. 
Those 200 strawberry plants were ex¬ 
pected to sail in and each produce a 
quart of berries. You see how the 
“system” figured out. At a low esti¬ 
mate you could put 3,000 barrels on an 
acre and that meant 60,000 quarts at 15 
cents a quart. You cannot any more 
deny it than you can these poultry 
“systems.” I tried it and spent about 
$10 in fitting up a barrel. The follow¬ 
ing Spring we had five living plants 
looking through these holes! Of course. 
I know the answer from the gentlemen 
who sell these “systems ”—“You haven’t 
the brains required to make it a suc¬ 
cess!” I admit it, and I do not know 
anyone who has—so we stick to the 
good old ways. 
Happy Redheads. —The picture shows 
where a bunch of our redheads live un¬ 
der the trees in the orchard. No, we 
haven’t come to the point of turning the 
children out to pasture, they are worth 
too much yet, and we can squeeze out 
room for them inside the house. These 
redheads walk on four feet; they are 
Jersey Red hogs. In former years we 
have tried all sorts of ways of keeping 
pigs. The ordinary pen is a filthy and 
foolish contrivance in which to make 
good pork. The opposite system of let¬ 
ting the pigs run at pasture or in an 
ot chard has its good points, and also 
some disadvantages. Unless you are 
careful to feed them properly, the hogs 
will gnaw or rub some of the younger 
trees. Some breeds are worse than 
others in this respect. A pig-tight fence 
in our country is somewhat like an an¬ 
gel’s visit, not frequently experienced, 
and the pigs often break out and do 
damage to the crops. The ordinary pas¬ 
ture hardly pays, as our land is too val¬ 
uable, and would better be kept in culti¬ 
vated crops. So this year we try the 
plan of keeping the pigs in portable 
houses and yards. The house shown in 
the picture is on runners, and easily 
hauled from one place to another by a 
good horse. The pen is portable, hooked 
together at the comers and heavy 
enough so that the hogs cannot easily 
throw it down. In case there is dan¬ 
ger of this, a crooked stick driven into 
the ground, with a crook over at the 
bottom of the fence, will hold it firmer. 
Inside this pen we have three pigs. As 
an experiment, they are being fed on 
the dish-water from the kitchen, thick¬ 
ened with a mixture of middlings and 
cornmeal and weeds from the garden. 
The house is hauled from place to place 
on the sod under the trees every two or 
three days. The hogs rip up the sod 
and apparently get a large amount of 
food out of the roots and grass. The 
bare spot in front shows what happens 
after these hogs get through playing 
tennis with their snout. This is the best 
system we have yet found; but little 
time is required to change the location. 
The hogs are quiet and clean, are mak¬ 
ing a steady growth, and they give the 
finest kind of culture for the orchard 
tree. A similar plan could be followed 
by hauling such a house up and down 
through the rows of an orchard; in fact, 
these redheads are having a happytime. 
h. w. c. 
Teacher: —“Now, children, are your 
fathers mammals or invertebrates?” 
Child (timidly after a painful silence: 
—“Please, miss, they’re all Republicans 
in this ward.”—Baltimore American. 
Mrs. Dashaway.— “Yes, while we 
were in Egypt we visited the Pyramids. 
They were literally covered with hiero¬ 
glyphics.” 
Mrs. Pneurichs —“Ugh ! wasn’t you 
afraid some of ’em would get on you?” 
—Puck. 
